


Calling Your Name

by ThatWildWolf



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy, 君の名は。| Kimi no Na wa. | Your Name.
Genre: (kind of but not really) - Freeform, Alien Cultural Differences, Alternate Timelines, Awkward Romance, Body Swap, But In A Jane Austen Kind Of Way, Cultural Differences, F/M, I Think If You're Invested In Their Relationship It Could Be Frustrating To Read, Identity Swap, Inspired by Kimi no Na wa. | Your Name., Nihlus Kryik is Saved, Species Swap, Temporary Character Death, Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It, heavily based on the movie
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-22
Updated: 2020-12-01
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:00:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27583061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatWildWolf/pseuds/ThatWildWolf
Summary: A Kimi no Na wa Shakarian AU! (Because my First Contact War AU was so well-received)Garrus Vakarian and Jane Shepard lead ordinary lives, going through the motions of their day to day work. Both of them have high hopes but little to no opportunity to break out of the seemingly endless logjam. All that changes when one day they suddenly start switching bodies.What seems like an inexplicable phenomenon at the beginning soon ripples in effect, leading them to a deeper understanding of the other and their own self. And maybe, just maybe, that power can be used to make a change.
Relationships: Female Shepard/Garrus Vakarian, Garrus Vakarian & Nihlus Kryik, Nihlus Kryik & Female Shepard
Comments: 5
Kudos: 10





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A note: if Shep and/or Garrus seem OOC at the beginning, it's just because I'm trying to make it kind of follow the anime here. Not exactly but kind of.

Shepard groaned.

"This is the life," she said angrily as she slammed her dinner tray down on the table. Every day had felt the same lately. She wasn't one to complain, but even her patience had been wearing thin. Anderson had told her she had a bright future ahead of her, but it really didn't feel that way. So far it felt like the Alliance was more focused on showing off a capable soldier like her than letting that soldier actually fight. She hadn't seen any action for months.

It was all just routine assignments, every day identical to the one before. The future she had envisioned for herself seemed further away with every passing moment. The Skyllian Blitz had felt like a turning point for a while. A fast-track promotion to N7, a bunch of medals and honors... All of that not leading to what she had wanted to achieve: a chance to see life beyond standard Alliance spaceships, a chance to meet _aliens_ , to travel all around the galaxy...

None of that had come true so far.

"Not what you envisioned when you enlisted, huh?"

She barely even looked at the soldier next to her, angry that he had a point.

"Not even close." She put her hand to her face. "I hate this stupid life!"

"...That's reassuring to hear from the hero of the Blitz."

"No, I'm sorry. I just expected it to be more. Travel all over the galaxy, meet all sorts of aliens..." Shepard smiled at her own stupid ideas from years earlier. "I want to see the Citadel one day! You know?"

The soldier shook his head. "Everyone does."

She looked at him, wondering if she'd seen him somewhere before. This was one of the bad parts of being considered a "hero": being immediately recognized by people she didn't know.

"Have we met before?" She put a hand to her forehead. "I'm sorry. It's all a blur lately."

"Actually, we were on a shakedown run together last week. Kaidan Alenko." He extended a hand and Shepard hesitantly shook it.

"Sorry," she said.

"That's okay."

She sighed, staring at the food on her plate with little enthusiasm. "...Wonder what kind of food they serve in those posh restaurants on the Citadel."

"You're really hard on that Citadel idea, aren't you, ma'am?" Kaidan tilted his head.

"What's not to like?" Shepard leaned back in her chair. "They say it's the biggest space station ever built in the history of _ever_. It's the seat of the Council. That station is basically the center of the world." She crossed her arms. "One day, when I make a name for myself, I'm going to go to the Citadel. And I'm going to have lunch in one of those ridiculously overpriced fancy restaurants."

Kaidan shook his head. "I guess everyone has dreams of _some_ kind."

Shepard nodded. "We all do." Her sight drifted towards the unappealing Alliance-issued food trays in front of her.

Was it wrong to wish for a different life? People called her a hero. Should she be content with that? She wanted something different. Not adventure but exploration. Experience.

None of those things seemed to be within her reach now.

"I hate this life," she said simply. "What wouldn't I give to be transferred to the Citadel! Or even one of the colonies. I want to see the galaxy!"

"As we all do, ma'am." Kaidan looked at her untouched tray of food. "...Are you going to eat that?"

Shepard stabbed the mashed potatoes with her fork. "I guess," she mumbled, dissatisfied.

"There's always tomorrow," Kaidan offered optimistically. "Aren't you in charge of that mission?"

"Oh yes," Shepard said sarcastically. "Because greatness awaits those who guard cargo transports." She shook her head slowly but decisively. "I'm sorry, I'm not good company lately. I didn't mean to sound like that.... Lieutenant?" She squinted, unsure if she was reading the markings on his uniform correctly.

He nodded his head.

Shepard smiled bitterly. "The job we do is important. Otherwise we wouldn't be doing it, right?"

"There's still tomorrow," Kaidan repeated. "And the day after that. One of these days it will get better."

Shepard didn't respond for a long while.

"...Thank you, Lieutenant," she said eventually. "I needed that."

She stood up and walked away, leaving her food untouched.

She smiled weaklyーto herself.

"There's always tomorrow."

* * *

Waking up was a nightmare.

Like always.

Mornings were never fun, but the duties of the day weren't going to magically wait, so getting up was, sadly, necessary.

Garrus blindly reached with his hand, searching for his visor on the nightstand. He couldn't find it. As a matter of fact, he couldn't find the nightstand, either.

He raised his left arm and turned on his omnitool, wanting to check what time it was...

He froze, motionless, unable to as much as move a muscle. He stared at his arm, his brain not coping with what he was seeing.

He felt his breath get shallow but he couldn't stop looking at the pale-skinned five-fingered hand that somehow responded to his moves as if it were his own.

_Not possible. Not possible. Can't be..._

He jumped to his feet and immediately fell over. He stared at his legs - the legs that were definitely his legs and which he felt as part of his body - and couldn't understand.

... _Human...?_

And those were his legs? How was he supposed to walk on something that wouldn't bend the right way?!

"Is this a nightmare or what?" he mumbled, giving himself yet another heart attack when his words came out in a voice that was undoubtedly female.

"Commander, we're almost at touchdown," a voice sounded from the intercom. "If you could please come up to the bridge."

Garrus looked around.

"...Me?" he whispered hoarsely. Oh, spirits, his voice. _Nope_. That was wrong. "Me?" He repeated, frantically trying to get his vocal cords to work properly. The sound still came out flat and one-dimensional. Not even the slightest hint of subvocals.

He stood up shakily, trying to balance on legs that didn't bend normally. The more he thought about it, the less he could remember how he had come to be here.

 _It feels like I'm dreaming_.

He tried to take a step forward, but it ended in him collapsing to the floor again.

That fall actually hurt more than it should have. It felt as if his entire body was soft and delicate.

 _A mirror. I need... a mirror_.

He couldn't find a mirror anywhere in sight. Although he hazily remembered reading somewhere that it's impossible to see one's reflection in a dream.

_Is that what this is? A dream?_

Garrus brought up his omnitool. It belonged to a Commander Shepard of the Systems Alliance Navy. A human woman whom he did not know and who definitely was not him. No photo ID was available at first glance.

 _If this_ is _a dream, it's certainly a bizarre one._

He stood up again and this time, he managed not to fall over.

 _Should I go where they asked me to...?_ He looked around. Then, he glanced down at himself. This outfit was probably only for sleeping.... It looked too revealing for something an officer would wear.

 _I'm going to have to change..._ He winced. _This is not a dream, it's a nightmare._


	2. Chapter 2

Shepard opened her eyes after the jarring sound of an alarm clock pulled her from her sleep.

_Another day, another stupid routine assignment._

She rubbed her eyes.

She froze, unmoving. Something felt different. Something was different. All of her senses became very heightened in a split-second as she went into alert mode.

_I don't have an alarm clock._

She sat up on the bed and looked around the small room she, impossibly, didn't know. _Where am I...?_ She noticed the ringing alarm clock on the nightstand. What was this?

She yawned and immediately a million red lights appeared in her head. Something was wrong. Something was wrong.

_I am..._

Nervously patting her chest, her face, her shoulders. Every one of those things felt wrong both as her body and under her touch. Her touch...

Staring at her hands.

. _..a turian?!_

She fell off the bed.

"You've got to be kidding me." She gasped, grabbing at her throat. "Oh my God, my voice..."

She could _feel_ two pairs of vocal cords working when she spoke. That was so freaky... And the voice—her voice—was definitely male, she was... She was...

"Garrus!"

Shepard yelped, backing away from the door that had opened so suddenly.

"What the hell are you even doing on the floor?" The salarian who had opened the door was looking down on her, clearly confused. "You're going to be late."

"Late..." She repeated dumbly.

"Late, you idiot." The salarian narrowed his eyes. "For work?"

"Right. Work... Because that's something I have..."

"Whatever. I just wanted to check what happened. Heard a noise."

"I fell from the bed," Shepard said quietly.

"...Okay then." The salarian looked like he wanted to say something more, but he just shook his head and closed the door.

Shepard didn't move for a longer moment, her brain trying to process the situation.

 _This is the craziest dream I've had so far._ She looked down at her rough three-fingered hands, flexing her fingers experimentally. _It feels so vivid..._

She noticed a mirror on the wall on the opposite side of the room and practically _threw_ herself toward it.

She stared into it, shocked.

The grey-plated turian in the mirror stared back at her, mimicking her every move. He even breathed when she did.

She hesitantly pulled up an omnitool, looking for some way to check her official info. She eventually found a driver's license for a skycar.

Garrus Vakarian. Twenty-six years old.

She looked at the photo on the license before glancing in the mirror. Same person.

"Gotta admire the attention to detail."

It was far from the most bizarre dream she'd ever had... Even if this one felt strangely vivid. Eventually, she just shrugged and decided to go with the flow.

Walking on digitigrade legs felt strange.

She found a neatly placed set of turian armor on the floor by the door.

_Uniform...? This armor?_

She leaned in to take a closer look. (Everything felt so weirdly far away, as if she was farther from the ground than normally.)

 _C-Sec..._ She didn't recognize the symbol, but the name was familiar. _Suppose that's where I work?_

Shepard stared at the armor defiantly, but it just lay there, unmoving. She sighed, bemused. "How am I supposed to...?"

Her talons caught on pretty much every part of the fabric. And there was no way for that carapace to ever fit into the tight underarmor she was trying to get into.

"This is way too realistic," Shepard decided once she was mostly dressed. She had practically torn the sleeping gown into pieces. "...Oops."

She shrugged. _Oh well_.

She looked around the room, filled with that uncomfortable feeling that she had forgotten to take something with her. Money, ID... Everything was in her omnitool.

Hesitantly, she opened the door and peeked outside into the hall. Not much of a hall—just two other doors and a kitchen/dining room at the end.

The salarian from earlier was sitting by the table, reading something on his omnitool.

"Garrus? Are you alright?" He said upon noticing her.

"Oh." Shepard hesitantly left the bedroom. "Uh, yeah. I'm great." She tried not to stare, but this was the first salarian she had ever seen in her life.

She wondered why they were living together. Boyfriend? Roommate? She couldn't really think of any other plausible explanations.

The salarian sipped his coffee, not even raising his eyes at her.

"Aren't you late for work?" he asked.

"Work!" Shepard stiffened. "I forgot!" She turned toward the door, but she had to stop dead in her tracks, embarrassed. "Um... Where do I work again?"

"C-Sec? I swear, you're getting weirder with every day."

"Oh. Yeah." Shepard chuckled nervously. It sounded diametrically different in her turian voice. "Right. C-Sec." _But where_ is _that...?_

She opened the door and was faced with yet another poorly-lit hallway. There was an elevator at the end and she entered it without much thought.

 _Should I go up or down?_ She had no idea what planet this was supposed to be, if any, or what type of building this was... She decided to play it safe and pressed zero on the control panel.

The light that hit her in the face when she stepped outside of the elevator was so bright that she had to squint her eyes at first. Simultaneously with the light, she was hit by a wave of sounds so varied and lively that it was like another shock for her. Aliens! And not just single aliens, like the salarian or the turian whose body she was in—there must have been hundreds of people of different races around her, all of them going about their business, seemingly busy and purposeful.

Shepard stood in place for a moment, overwhelmed by the amount of new sensory data she was experiencing. It seemed everyone spoke their own language, which she could kind of hear, but as soon as she focused on a voice or conversation, her translator began working to relay it to her in English, and that feeling of almost being able to catch a foreign language but not quite was the most prominent in Shepard at the moment.

The aliens... So diverse! She had seen more kinds of turians in the last thirty seconds than she had thought _existed_! And those elcor... Even now when she had a turian's body, they easily towered over her. She noticed a hanar floating by. Incredible! She could kind of see through their body!

_What kind of place...?_

In a split-second, she forgot all about that, running toward the edge of the platform overlooking the beautiful park below.

"He lives on the Citadel!" She exclaimed.

 _The Citadel!_ She could only dream of seeing that station with her own eyes, and now here she was, overlooking the most prestigious part of the Presidium.

She found herself smiling widely, mouth open with joy.

"Wow!" She laughed out loud, all inhibitions gone. "Ha! Yes!"

"Did you see that turian?"

"What's _wrong_ with him?"

She ignored those whispers around her. _This is all just a dream anyway._

"Hello."

"What the hell is _that?!"_ Shepard all but jumped away, caught immediately off-guard. By instinct, she reached for her gun and immediately she realized what it was that she had felt she had left the apartment without. No guns. No weapons.

"I am Avina. I'm a fully interactive virtual guide for the Citadel."

Shepard narrowed her eyes. _A VI, huh...?_

"A guide..." _That sounds exactly like what I need, actually._ "Great..." She approached the VI somewhat uncertainly. "Hi? Um... I want to use this service."

"Of course. Logging you in now." The hologram flickered a bit. "Welcome back, Detective Vakarian. It has been sixteen days since you last logged in to Avina. I recommend familiarizing yourself with the new and updated terms of service."

"What? No." Shepard blinked, a bit thrown off. "No, I just want to know how I can get to my job at C-Sec."

"The shortest route to the Citadel Security Academy is via the rapid transit system. However, if you wish to reach the daily exercise goal you set five months ago, I recommend taking a walk. The route has been marked on your omnitool's GPS."

"Great. I'll walk, then!" Shepard smiled widely. "Thanks!"

"Of course. Logging you out, Detective."

Shepard looked down at her hands. Still a turian. She clenched her fists. _Still so real..._

"Detective, huh?" She nodded her head to ponder on that. "I like the sound of that."

All in all, it wasn't a long walk. The distance, at least, because Shepard couldn't help herself and stopped every so often when she noticed something alien or curious to her. The Presidium was even more fascinating than the ward she'd come from. There was a _lake_ on the space station! How much money and resources did that take? So amazing. And the aliens? Absolutely interesting. There were even some races she could not identify, but she wasn't sure if they were intelligent species or just people's pets.

Ah, right. C-Sec. Work... She nervously stepped around in the elevator.

"Vakarian!"

It was mostly the tone, not the name that made Shepard stop.

"...Me?" She looked around, but there was no one else the turian could have been talking to.

"I hope you have a good excuse ready for why you're late two hours!"

"I got lost," Shepard said uncertainly.

"You got _lost_ _?"_ The turian wrinkled his nose and she wasn't sure how to read that gesture, but he seemed displeased. "On your way to work?"

"The Citadel is so big..."

"I thought you were the one who always said the opposite."

"Oh." Shepard didn't know how to respond. She still felt detached from this reality, like dreaming about someone else's life. "It's so easy to get lost here, though..."

The turian shook his head. "Whatever. Get your ass in gear and start filing those reports." He nodded his head towards one of the empty desks in the office and Shepard made sure to remember which one it was.

"Yes, sir." She saluted. "Right away."

"Spirits, Vakarian. Relax. We're not military."

"...Right."

The turian looked at her one last time. His brow plates moved slightly.

"You're not wearing your visor today?"

"Oh." She touched her face, almost _expecting_ something to be there. "I'm... not."

"Good. You look like an idiot in that thing."

He walked away and Shepard breathed out in relief.

_When is this dream gonna end?_

At least filing reports was something perfectly within her abilities. Most of the cases were boring. Tax evasion, tax evasion, a stolen skycar, tax evasion yet again... After a few hours of typing on the computer she felt completely drained.

Her omnitool pinged and Shepard looked at the notification, surprised.

"My shift is over..."

"Hey, Garrus." A young grey-plated turian leaned on her desk.

"H- Hey!" She panicked. "Hi, uh... there." _Can't remember his name, but I think we're friends..._

"I didn't think you'd be coming in today," the turian continued, seemingly unfazed. "It's not like you to run late."

"I'm going drinking with a couple of guys from work. Wanna come with?"

"Oh." Shepard hesitated. "I, um..." She instinctively reached towards her hair like she always did when she was nervous. Her hand found nothing.

"Your shift's over now, isn't it?"

"I guess, but... I think I'm gonna take a rain check." She put a hand on her stomach. "I'm kind of hungry, actually." Not in the mood for drinking.

"Rain check, huh?" The turian nodded his head. "Don't think I've heard that one before... Well, whatever suits you."

Shepard brought up her omnitool and quickly searched for restaurants nearby. There were several, and plenty of them had very good reviews.

She smiled. "Nice."

A few minutes later, she was standing in line in a restaurant much more fancy than her C-Sec uniform suggested she should frequent, and definitely fancier than any she had seen before in real life.

She took a small table in the corner, not wanting to disturb anyone.

"Good evening, sir." An asari waitress handed her a menu, which Shepard graciously accepted. "What will you be having today?"

Shepard glanced at the prices. "Wow."

She had never seen food so expensive in her life before.

"Oh well, this is a dream anyway!" She closed the menu. "I'd like..."

She hesitated.

_Oh, right. I'm a turian. Dextro-amino acid based._

"Uh... Can you recommend any dextro-amino food?"

The waitress glared at her.

"...Sure," she said eventually.

Shepard smiled widely and almost immediately stopped, self-conscious. That grin must have looked predatory on a turian.

That smile returned as soon as her order came.

 _Oh, wow._ No exaggeration, this was some of the best food she had ever tried in her entire life. She didn't even mind the way people looked at her and her large three-course meal for only one person.

_What a great dream..._

She didn't even look at the final total price. It didn't seem to matter in the big picture.

 _Saw the Citadel, met and talked to actual aliens, and had a great meal, all of that completely for free._ Shepard was smiling as she returned to her apartment. _What a great dream._

The salarian, her roommate, must have been either out or asleep by the time she had returned.

She stripped off her armor and fell on the bed, content.

"This is the life," she purred. She tried to adjust her head on the pillow comfortably, but her fringe kept getting in the way.

_I could really get used to living like this... Well, for a few months maybe. Still..._

She looked up at the ceiling.

"...This was a nice dream."

She closed her eyes.

* * *

"What?"

Garrus stared at his omnitool, dumbfounded.

"...W—What?"

According to his banking records, he had spent almost a month's worth of rent on dinner yesterday.


End file.
